The Case For Abandoning Hope.

ONCE YOU'VE EXPERIENCED A THING YOURSELF YOU SEE IT ALL AROUND YOU. The "Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon," Cancer has been that for me. I keep seeing my peers drop like flies to it. I see even more people, part of a contemporary zeitgeist that knows little real hardship, taking to social media and leaving what in our superficial, atomised culture passes for support. "My hopes and thoughts go out to you!" "Hope you get well soon!" While we all lead busy, hectic lives and taking a moment to send along one's thoughts is always appreciated, I have often found something about this phenomenon unsettling.

An etymological examination of the word "hope" leads one to the Old English word hopian where it is positioned as a theological virtue linked to salvation and the mercy of a deity or higher consciousness; to trust in an outcome with confidence, based not on any empirical proof or methodology, but merely upon one's faith in the divine superintendence of unseen forces. It is fundamentally a childlike state, built upon the a priori expectation of an outcome without any synthetic justification for that expectation in-hand.

Where the absence of any real faith is the order of the day, hope ^TM is little more than nihilism masquerading as compassion. Hope is something that is sold, by my industry, as the sine qua non of life. If you just trust in hope, everything will be fine! Vermithrax will be slain. The prince will fall in love with you. The evil empire will be brought low. "Rebellions are built on hope." "Hope is like the sun, if you only believe in it when you can see it, you'll never make it through the night..." This is all incoherent nonsense. Hope is a passive state. It is the abdication of all personal agency; the abandonment of critical thinking for the quicksand of magical thinking. It is an insidious mind-virus meant to condition the individual into a hand wringing, anemic mindset wherein the peasant looks to those imperial forces, imbued with power, to act as the sole agents in the world; because powerlessness, sold as an identity, is profitable. Hope is not a substitute for social bonds. Hope is not enough to live on. Get busy! Choose risk! Show up! Stand up and do something! Embody empathy, for others, for your present and future self! Be an agent in the world! Do not surrender what precious little power you have in this life to externalities! FUCK HOPE, TAKE ACTION!